Looking at the virtually unperishable I wanted to find a suitable name, but first I needed to acknowledge what I wanted for the companies future.

With the type of product in mind there was one thing that I would like to sell, Fish. Portugal has one of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the world, and has a claim pending to extend it even further. This EEZ provides a vast access to a big variety and very good quality of fish. This and the very competitive canning industry made products such as Santa Catarina and Briosa ideal products to start with.

I was in a position where focusing on what the company could amount to seamed to be the next step. As a starting point Santa Catarina and Briosa provide a reasonably diverse offering, but I knew that going forward the two brands won’t be enough, and other products will be necessary to expand and grow. Still focused on the virtually unperishable, the list looked infinite, vegetables, soups, beer, etc. all proved valid contenders for future expansion, and suddenly it hit me, I opened the all mighty Google and started to type “Canned World”. With fingers crossed the great search god came bearing gifts. Nothing! Next on the list was validating if URL was still available and to my joy, it was!

Having chosen a name, the next phase on the list was getting to know the product I would be selling and start to contact vendors.

Have you ever started your own company? How did you get to the product you would sell? What about the name? Share your experiences with me and stay tuned.

It was somewhere around May and I was thinking of new ways to generate some more income. After going through all the projects I had thought of before, and seen that all had come to an abrupt halt, I asked myself why all had failed?

Long story short it had to do with:

Lack of preparation;

No marketing;

Bad choice of products;

No knowledge;

Lack of focus;

No strategic partners;

The list goes on, but I’ll spare you the suffering. Through all the suffering there was also learning in effect and that learning is still taking place, with every new step, but I’m still far from knowing exactly what I’m doing.

Now that the “what went wrong” was established I went over all the lessons and pondered where to start. I picked the “bad product” lesson as a starting point and something my dad had told me came to mind, “no matter what, people will always have to eat”. This was true when I first enlisted for the Navy as a cook, as it is today. Going over this again and again in my head I thought about a food related product. With a product already in mind potential problems started to role in. Food, as we all know, has a great tendency to go bad in a very short time frame, and so, I looked to smooth out the edges and ended up a good fix, why not opt for canned food? Virtually imperishable, canned food now offers a great deal of options from vegetables, to soups, to surprisingly great fish fillets.

Now that a product segment was selected it was time to start brainstorming what I wanted Canned World to be…

It’s not about falling down, it’s about getting up and pick up where I left off.

Hum…

Guess it’s that time of the year again…

Every once in a while I look back and see that what I had proposed to do just faded into the background. All my intentions of doing better than I did before, of getting things done and stop procrastinating, just disappeared. I know what you are thinking, and the answer is yes. I went back to my origins and procrastinated again. And the worst part is that since I had no deadline I did it until now.

Well this time it’s going to be different (or at least I hope). This time I wont impose myself with a “write something every week” mentality. I will write something when I feel like it. I will write it for myself and for whom ever wants to read, but mainly for myself. I’ll write about everything that goes about in my life. Books that I’m reading, projects that I’m involved with and other mundane stuff. So, stay tuned to what I’ll be posting next. It will probably be something that has to do with Canned food and how I’m going to get back to CannedWorld.

If you think having a driver’s license will take you far, wait until you start programing!

When I was a teenager, there was one thing that I wanted more than anything else that by my 18th birthday I’d have a driver’s license! In my mind that was the road to freedom. I could then go wherever I wanted by my own means. I could take holidays further away from home and not be dependent on anyone or anything. The world was mine to conquer and see!

13 years have passed and a new form of driver’s license is here. Programming. Programing is now the new vehicle that will take you anywhere and everywhere. Learning to code enables you to create, to help and to become a more rational person!

One good way to learn and help make the world a better place is with Quincy Larson’s Free Code Camp. Free Code Camp will teach you programing from front end to backend and while you are learning you will be working for yourself (creating your portfolio page) and for non profits.

If you are looking for some different programing languages that may also enable you to get some sort of certificate, why not try Edx? Edx gives you access to various learning tools provided by top universities like MIT, Berkeley or Harvard just to name a few.

Another fun and interactive way to learn is through Codecademy. This is great tool to get you coding no mater where you are. All coding is done on Codecademy’s website and your work is always on the cloud.

Start your journey with ease and get to know the language that is best for you, since there are a lot of them to chose from. If you don’t no where to start try reading this post buy Quincy himself and find which one is best suited for you.

If you still don’t believe me, see this short video with all those well known people that learned to code sometime along their live.

Do you use other platforms other than the mentioned above? Please leave a comment and share your knowledge.

Can anyone relate to that one conversation around 99% of all children have with their parents?

I sure can!

I remember being persistent to a point where my parents would cave in to my wishes. Well… Not always. But the point is I used to be quite tireless pursuing whatever my ambition was, and that sort of changed with the process of becoming an adult. Somewhere along the way I heard too many times that it was not acceptable to act certain ways and that inhibited my ability to go after my deepest dreams. I had to stop dreaming and set my feet on the ground.

With time and retrospect, I came to realize that I should probably stop being such an adult and start acting more like a child. As the adult that I have become I tend to overthink everything and ponder every outcome to a point where I’m no longer tolerant of risk. This intolerance I’ve developed refrains me from acknowledging certain opportunities and therefore my life stagnated like that of most adults out there.

The time has come once again to embrace my inner child. To seek my dreams in a restless way, facing rejection and never taking no for an answer. Imagine outcomes, solutions and new approaches. Be more inventive and imaginative. Create, make and remain tireless.

We all have dreams that we want to see come true, but sometimes things go wrong and making them a reality gets hard. See how you can overcome this by setting goals.

António Gedeão, a Portuguese poet once wrote that dreams command life. And this was as true then as it is now. For some, the dream is to build a great family. For others, that fabulous car they walk by each day. And for a great some, the dream is that million dollar house that has it all. We all dream, and when we dream we dream big. Not 3 story high suburban house big. I’m talking about New York skyscraper big! But when it comes to making those dreams happen we just seem to be lacking something to make them come true. Why’s that?

For starters, we dream big, Big, BIG, and become overwhelmed with the idea. Overwhelmed to the point that we can’t take another step forward because we think the dream is simply unattainable. Because our vision is simply too big to be created with our small salary and little time. But is it? Derek Sivers (@sivers on Twitter) has a great view on the attainability of dreams, check it out bellow.

I’m guessing that you’re telling yourself that this post and clip come just in time. After all New Year is the best time of the year to get your dreams going. It’s that period of the year when you are all hyped and full of optimism. Blood flows through your veins at high speed and you are ready to change the world!

By now I’m sure you’ve written down all your new year’s resolutions and are starting to getting down to making them happen. Most of them might fall short, not because you aren’t able of making them a reality, because you set the bar too high for your first try. If you haven’t run in a whole year, how do you expect to complete a marathon tomorrow? If you haven’t saved for that new car, how will you buy it tomorrow. If you haven’t been training, how do you expect to be lean tomorrow?

Take a good look at your resolutions. Start by break them down into small portions and start getting your hands dirty to make them a reality. Why do this you ask? Well for starters all your big Big BIG dreams, that at first seem to be unattainable are now easier to reach because they are not so overwhelming in the short run. Second, you now have goals set and in place to point you towards something. Let’s look at this example. Say you currently run at a pace of 6min/km and that by year end you want to be at 4:30min/km. Don’t just say “By year end I’ll be running at a pace of 4:30min/km” because once you see what 4:30min/km is like you might just simply say “Forget it.”. The better way to go at it is to break it down to monthly more attainable goals. Simply fine tune your mentality to a subtler “By the end of January I’ll be running at 5:45min/Km and 5:30min/km by February.”. That way you can see yourself get closer and closer to your goal and keep yourself motivated. And the same way you do this for running faster, you can do this for almost everything in your life. Create goals and make things happen! And remember, dream without goals is just that, a dream.

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Overcoming difficulties can sometimes be hard due to numerous reasons. Don’t let them get to you and Just do what it is you want to do.

Thinking about something is easy, and so is thinking about doing something. But when it comes to doing it… well… that’s a whole different story.

Everything we think about doing has its own set of difficulties. In my case, doing something publicly posed a certain number of obstacles in my head. Fear of rejection was without a doubt the biggest of them all, closely followed by the Fear that people wouldn’t acknowledge my work or that my work would be of no use to others or the Fear of not being able to keep up and just quitting.

These are all real Fears, and more than not go through everyone’s head. Don’t get me wrong, they are more than legitimate but they should also be deemed of little importance. To see why let’s go over them one by one:

Fear of rejection – Rejection comes in many forms, from a depreciating comment about your work to being made fun of for doing what it is that you are trying to accomplish.

For me this was the Fear that bothered me the most. I felt it as if it was there to stay. With time, I came to realized that I’m doing this for me and me alone. When you do something for yourself you should always be satisfied, regardless of what others think. If you are sharing your mind with the world you will without a doubt run into three types of people. The ones that will try to put you down; These are the people that give body to your uneasiness, and these are also the ones that don’t want to see you succeed. In a way, they to suffer from the Fear of rejection. For them it’s easier to put you down rather than getting their hands dirty. The second type simply don’t care for what it is you are engaged in and will be on their way. Lastly, your true audience. These people will hear what you have to say. They will share their story with you and listen to what it is you are telling them. They want to know how you overcame your fears and will strive to replicate your results. It is for you and this last group of people that you should be performing. Disregard all other, they are just not worth your time.

Fear that my work won’t be acknowledged/will have no value – No one likes to work just for the fun of working. Everyone works with goals, or at least they should. They guide you towards completion.

When you work with others as your audience, you want to offer value on what it is you are creating. This leads to Fear that you might not give your spectators exactly what they want. Keep calm and work for yourself and your public will eventually show up. When you work for yourself you are growing as a person and gaining experience, creating value for others is just a byproduct of creating value for yourself. As stated at worldometers.info human count is at about 7,473,840,000. With these many potential users of what it is you offer you are sure to find a group of people that will realize value regardless of your Fear.

Fear of not keeping up and quitting – This is another one that torments me. Every day I wake up thinking that I can’t keep it up, views are low, people don’t engage so why continue?

To make it simple and straight, we are all going to die someday so why even try? The truth is we all love living and we all want to create a legacy. Whether your legacy is perpetuated through your children or through your sculptures everyone has the urge to create one. The joy of living and our ambition is what gives us strength. Clinch on to them and don’t look back.

How then do I overcome these Fears, you ask? Well the answer is simple… you just do it. Just create whatever it is you would like to create. Put yourself to the test and do what it is you ambition. Humans adapt and learn. As you commit, you will learn and all these Fears will eventually dissipate. Don’t look back and don’t be bothered for what others think or say. Do it for yourself and you will accomplish what you want. Have faith in yourself.

Although in this next video we hear Derek Sivers (@sivers) talk about leadership, you can see that all the Fears that we went about have a placement within the clip. Watch the clip and look at the Leader overcome his Fears and go on to create a movement. After all, who doesn’t love a Fearless Leader?